Our Opinion: Of all people, it's legislators who are keeping hope alive

"Good people can't function well in a bad system. The system creates the wrong incentives in our democracy ... and does not force people to work together."

OHIO SECRETARY OF STATE JON HUSTED

Comment

By GATEHOUSE OHIO MEDIA

Times Reporter

By GATEHOUSE OHIO MEDIA

Posted Nov. 17, 2013 at 1:00 PM

By GATEHOUSE OHIO MEDIA
Posted Nov. 17, 2013 at 1:00 PM

"Good people can't function well in a bad system. The system creates the wrong incentives in our democracy ... and does not force people to work together."

OHIO SECRETARY OF STATE JON HUSTED

Jon Husted is referring to redistricting — as dry a political issue as you'll find, but one with enormous significance. Most experts see a strong link between the way state and federal legislative district boundaries are drawn and the current counterproductive, my-way-or-the-highway approach to governing.

Fortunately — in Ohio, at least — there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Husted, a Republican, said last week that a bipartisan state commission is close to agreement on a ballot proposal that would take much of the politics out of the process of drawing district lines.

State Rep. Vernon Sykes, D-Akron, commission co-chairman, confirmed the same to The Columbus Dispatch, saying, "We're pretty close on many of the issues." And Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder, R-Medina, the other co-chairman, said redistricting is "an issue we want to deal with sooner rather than later."

The group they head, the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission, is working on a ballot issue for voters statewide to decide in November 2014.

Commission member Fred Mills told The Dispatch that the group supports one element of the redistricting plan that Husted has long advocated. It would require one member of the minority party in the Legislature to sign off on the redrawn maps for the General Assembly and Ohio seats in Congress.

We hope the commission also adopts this key proposal that Husted supports: compactness as a requirement for the redrawn districts. Gerrymandering has become the rule rather than the exception in Ohio, and the last redistricting carved Stark County into three congressional districts for the first time in the county's history.

When voters defeated a recent redistricting amendment to the Ohio Constitution that was proposed by the League of Women Voters of Ohio and other good-government group we thought the issue would die of neglect.

We had scant faith that Ohio legislators would be the key to keeping hope for change alive. We'd love to be wrong about that.